4G technology is the next generation wireless technology after 3G. 4G technology encompasses many of the features of WiMax which is the IEEE 802.16 standard for wireless broadband. Many manufacturers are currently developing and testing equipment to support and deploy 4G. As 4G brings more advanced technology, features, bandwidth, and services, to the wireless environment, more destructive behavior like attacks on the network or devices in the network will be encountered.
Today, various types of attacks on the network or devices can be seen. These attacks can range from bombarding a device with malicious data packets to sending intermittent data packets to a device to cause a battery drain. As different types of attacks are created, manufacturers and service providers work feverishly to try to thwart the attacks. This may be reflected in the creation of devices that can detect or mitigate attacks from malicious packets. This can also be seen in the creation of network solutions that monitor a network for certain types of packets. However, not all types of malicious data packets are detectable. Some of the most difficult detection occurs from perceived abnormal operating conditions. What might tend to be an abnormal situation with a device might prove to be a malicious denial of service situation. Manufacturers and service providers are helpless to defend against this type of behavior without having additional resources in the network and having knowledge about the operating environment of the network to be protected.
The problem with denial of service attacks becomes more acute when a wireless environment is involved. Not only does a service provider have to know how to detect, reduce, and remove the malicious packet over a packet network like the Internet, the service provider has to know how to perform the mitigation with wireless devices. The service provider has to know how to detect and mitigate over various wireless technologies including wireless broadband. Furthermore, the impact of wireless technologies means that more devices are susceptible to becoming malicious devices. Whereas in a wire line network, a computing device is the main target of an attack. In a wireless environment, many more devices are prone to attack and are prone to be attackers. Such devices can include mobile telephones, wirelessly connected computing devices, and PDAs to name a few.
With all of the issues discussed above, service providers have to be concerned with implementing 4G and other networks that can allow for a variety of detection of malicious activity especially across different devices in a network and across different technologies. The service providers have to implement a scheme for mitigating the malicious activity especially for threats which were previously difficult or impossible to detect.